


Chapter 8

by Adge



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22105648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adge/pseuds/Adge
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: SSSS In Alliterative Verse





	Chapter 8

Night, death cradling, to dawn and hope  
Precedence yields. In the proud ruin  
Of the Dane’s capital the cat-tank stirs,  
The seekers wake to a soft snowfall  
The cairn cloaking of the cat-mother brave  
And the lich-beast’s corpse. Lalli night-scout  
Wends back to camp with the way forward  
Mapped and studied as Mikkel field-cook  
Breakfast is serving to the brave comrades  
Around the fire. The reivers sneer  
At the sour porridge, Sigrun war-maid  
Protests loudly, yet the tuck swallows  
For future need. But food spurning,  
Lalli, noita, the lost dog-beast  
Cleans, unmembers, reclaiming its bones,  
Sacring the relics in sun and snow,  
Appalling Emil, porridge bearer  
To his long-swinked friend. But Lalli wise,  
Skilled spirit-guide, the skull removes  
From the death-leaving, from the dog's body,  
Cleans and shrives it, and shrines the skull  
On the topmost twig of a tall pinetree  
Freeing and honouring a friend regained  
To a new life-grace, release, rebirth.  
Tuuri meanwhile, technical skald  
By wireless link warns the base-folk  
Of future plans: to forage deep  
In book-hoard syes made safe by snow  
And cold sunlight. The cat-tank packed  
And its team stowed, Tuuri driver  
Forces Lalli, family unminded  
Cousin forgot in the gang's reiving  
Their forays and fights in the foe-ridden chaos  
Of the Danish roose, to ride with her  
In the driver's cab; but drained Lalli  
Sleeps on the dash through the slithering ride  
Along snow-clogged ways snared with stonefall  
The long failure of the lost kingdom  
In the Silent World. Sodden vehicles,  
Snaking artics and snagged trailers  
In broken gaps bridging chasms  
In shattered roads and shent highways  
Till the heavy snow halts the cat-tank  
Safeless, wardless. Sigrun sneering  
Doubts that night-scout noita Lalli,  
Unwitting the chance of winter's cold,  
For peril of snow prepared a gate  
To find their sye; defending kin,  
Sib-loyal Tuuri takes Sigrun's gage  
Hotakainen holds their corner  
Lalli trusting to have tried escapes  
From the snow-clogging a snib lifted  
And a door opened; disappointing  
Lalli night-scout lacks a game plan  
Lalli shameful shends his cousin  
Sigrun's judgement justifying  
Aghast Tuuri goaded to speech  
Angry with Lalli she oversteps  
Accuses him with careless words  
Of groundless deeds. Grandma naming  
With incautious lips calls to Lalli  
From distant times a day of shame  
Of comrades lost through careless work  
Slain uselessly by sloppy notes  
That Lalli new-trained night-scout callow  
Hardly more than a mere boy-child  
Frommed, uprooted, wrote overhasty.  
Goaded by shame, by guilt mastered  
Lalli youngling forlost himself  
But sib Onni sought his hiding  
Calling him out as a coward fool  
For one mistake; wounding him deep  
For a single slip, sorrow recalling  
Of their grandma's doom. Grided in heart  
Strength exhausted, straight from the tank  
Looking for safety Lalli night-scout  
Runs the wheel ways routes exploring  
Till a building found, bare, wide gated,  
Wall-less within, well-fettled road  
For the fleeing folk, but flesh cocoons  
Hang from the ceil, heralds of death,  
Of dern troll-foes the detritus vile  
Of hidden rash-cursed. Hammering blows  
From a scout's blade destroy a few  
Proving them dead - but doubting mage  
Lalli noita lacks certainty  
That every pod to peace has slept  
In Tounela, and testing safe  
Each lingering threat too long would take  
In human form; to hunt the foe  
His luonto calls, his lynx ghost-might  
A claw-shod wind, cleansing cat-main  
Wreaks disaster, uprips, outstabs,  
Shatters, unskins, unshapes, destroys  
Every cocoon. His cat form shed,  
Unmanned, weakened, main exhausted,  
Noita Lalli, in nose and eyes  
Bleeding, glue-eyed, glances around  
The shent troll holt; sure of his win  
Lalli way-scout wends to the gate  
Of the square beyond scouting the way  
In snow-field wide. Worried for Lalli  
But following his blaze to the fearful hall  
The cat-tank stops, the sturdy Dane  
A party makes of immune people  
To seek the scout. Sigrun war-maid  
Beholding the lair, the hall plastered  
With dead trollpods, doubts that Lalli  
Could yet survive in the vasted hall,  
In the troll-haunt filth; but tracing the blood  
Trusting Emil tracks discovers  
Where Lalli scout left the building  
Safe and unharmed. Sudden, unwaited,  
Lalli himself looms in the door  
Barely aware walks to the cat-tank  
Slumps on the nose, the news bringing  
Of a new campsite for the cat-tank crew  
Safely to rest. Unseen in the mess  
From lynx sight hid by its little size  
A sneaking troll under snow creeps,  
Cautiously follows. The cat new-friend  
Senses the troll, signals the threat  
Of a free enemy but frommed Reynir,  
Unfettled wight, for fear mistakes  
Her stretching neck, her straight gazes.  
The wide campsite, walled with palaces,  
A kingly ward, to the winds open,  
Dight with snowdrifts, doubtful appears  
To bold Sigrun. She bids Mikkel  
If the damage around to the Danes is owed  
But Mikkel asserts the mess ancient  
From the first days of fear's dominion.  
So the cat-tank rests in a royal campsite.


End file.
